“Art can be overwhelming when you try to take it all in. Every artist inhabits their own limb and there is no cohesiveness today. There’s no way to see the whole elephant in this particular time. It’s too much to take in, the information overload. You just become an expert in your little area. The birds in this picture become the little experts within the frame they inhabit. They know only that frame, or at least they think they do.” Walton Ford

Walton Ford has practically made a career of imitating the style of John James Audoban. In his satirical depictions of wildlife, Ford mocks things like industrialism, politics, and the effect of mankind on the natural environment.

In Walton Fords painting Nila, an elephant being flocked by masses of different types of bird. The elephant is missing a segment of his tusk and has a massive erection. Comprised of twenty two different canvas’, Nila is rather large in scale – 144” x 216”. Ford uses varying media within his work, including the work at hand -Watercolor, gouache, ink, and pencil on paper.

I feel that Walton Ford’s Nila is amazing. Not only is Ford’s aesthetic style masterful, but the satirical nature of his work, and this piece in specific, is both comical and thought provoking. Nila conveys many hidden messages. The effects of mankind are especially evident within the severed tusk. Elephant poaching and capturing to attain the highly valuable ivory tusk is both devastating and enraging…as well as illegal. The undeniably large elephant sized erection puts a comical spin on Audobon’s classical style.

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/ford/art_nila.html#